The Totally Made-up Civil War Diary of Amanda MacLeish

by Claudia Mills

  That afternoon, Amanda went with Beth’s parents to see a matinee performance by Beth’s Irish dancing school. Amanda’s mother didn’t come with them; despite Amanda’s friendship with Beth, the two families weren’t close. Amanda’s parents always made jokes about how much granola Beth’s parents ate, even though Amanda had never seen anyone eating granola at Beth’s house. She knew the joke meant they thought Beth’s parents were hippies, left over from the 1960s.

  Beth was already at the Arts Center, so Amanda sat alone in the backseat while Beth’s mother drove, and Beth’s father sat next to her, complaining.

  “Look at all these cars. We should have bicycled,” he commented as they waited at the first traffic signal. The red light glistened on the dark pavement.

  “In the pouring rain?”

  “We have rain gear. Lots of people cycle in the rain. In Copenhagen, everyone bikes everywhere in all kinds of weather.”

  “This isn’t Copenhagen.”

  Amanda giggled. For some reason, Beth’s parents’ conversations always struck her as funny, whereas if her own parents had said the very same things, the conversation would have felt tense, strained, even hostile. If her mother had said, “This isn’t Copenhagen,” it would have come out as, “If you think Copenhagen is such a cycling paradise, why don’t you go live there?” When Beth’s mother said it, it came out as, “You are an impractical dreamer, and that’s why I love you.”

  The light changed, and Beth’s mother drove on. “I hope Beth’s number goes well,” she said. “She seemed so nervous about it last night.”

  “She wasn’t really,” Amanda offered. “Sometimes Beth says she’s nervous, but she doesn’t mean it. It’s just a thing you say before a concert. Beth never worries.”

  “Everyone worries,” Beth’s mother said.

  Well, certainly Beth didn’t worry the way that she, Amanda, worried.

  “If all the bicycles in the rest of the world become cars, everyone will have plenty to worry about,” Beth’s father said. “We haven’t even seen the start of global warming yet. Wait till those billions of cars start emitting their greenhouse gases.”

  “Okay, we should have bicycled,” Beth’s mother said.

  Amanda didn’t feel like giggling this time. It hadn’t been one bit of fun biking home from the motel eight hours ago, tears mixing with raindrops on her wet face.

  The recital was excellent. Amanda loved to watch Irish dancers, their feet clattering and stomping so furiously that her own feet started to twitch in rhythm. To Amanda’s surprise, James and his parents were in the audience. There was a black girl in the beginning class; she must have been James’s younger sister. Maybe Amanda shouldn’t have been surprised: not every black person had to do African dancing.

  Beth and Meghan were in the advanced class. In Amanda’s opinion, Beth was the best, though Meghan was an excellent dancer, too. Both girls’ feet never faltered, and their smiles never faded, even though it had to be exhausting to dance like that. Amanda clapped until her palms stung.

  The fiddle music sang inside her as she filed out of the auditorium behind Beth’s parents to the reception set up in the lobby. Polly would have danced to that kind of old-time music. Except that Polly was hardly in the mood for dancing these days, with Jeb lying wounded somewhere.

  While Amanda waited for Beth to appear, she walked across the lobby to say hello to James.

  “Hi,” she said.

  “Hi,” he said.

  “Was that your sister?” As soon as she said it, she knew it was a stupid question. There was only one black dancer in the whole concert, and James and his father were the only black people in the audience.

  “Uh-huh,” he said.

  “How did she get interested in Irish dancing?” That was a legitimate question you could ask anybody.

  “She saw an Irish dancing show on TV. But she likes all kinds of dancing—she’s taken classes in tap dancing, too.”

  Amanda thought of James standing so stiff on the risers during “Dixie,” hardly doing the song motions at all.

  “But you don’t like dancing. I mean, do you?” Had she asked another dumb question?

  Luckily, James laughed. “How did you guess?”

  Relieved, Amanda laughed, too. Then James drifted away to look for his sister, and Amanda rejoined Beth’s parents at the refreshment table. A few minutes later, Beth greeted them there, her cheeks aflame from dancing.

  Amanda hugged her. “You were wonderful!”

  Then her parents hugged her. “Wonderful!” they echoed.

  Beth flashed the same big smile she had worn throughout her dance. “I was pretty good,” she conceded. “Okay, I was wonderful.”

  “I never understand how you can remember all the steps,” Amanda said.

  “You don’t have to remember them. You hear the music, and your feet just start doing them.” Beth gulped down her punch. “I’m hot. Are the rest of you hot?”

  “The rest of us haven’t been dancing Irish jigs,” her father said.

  “Let’s go outside,” Beth told Amanda. To Amanda’s relief, Meghan, busy with her own family, didn’t join them.

  Together the two girls stood under the awning over the Arts Center entrance. The rain pounded the blacktop, like millions of tiny dancing feet. Amanda liked that simile. She hadn’t been using enough similes in Polly’s journal.

  “What did you guys do this morning?” Beth asked.

  Amanda swallowed hard before she replied. She couldn’t hide the truth from Beth forever. “Well, things have been sort of strange at my house.”

  “Strange how?”

  I went to visit my dad at his motel, and he wouldn’t let me in.

  “Well, you know how my parents fight a lot?”

  Beth looked uncomfortable. “They don’t fight that much. At least when I’m there. And my parents fight, too. Sometimes my mother secretly dries the laundry in the clothes dryer when my father isn’t home so he won’t see that she didn’t hang it up on the clothesline.”

  Amanda’s parents had always quarreled about trivial things. But in their case the triviality of the cause made the fight itself seem more, not less, serious.

  “So did they have a fight today?” Beth asked.

  “I guess you could call it that.” A very long fight that had been going on and on for weeks without any yelling, or even any speaking. The gap between Amanda’s world and Beth’s world was too huge to bridge in one quick conversation.

  Beth shrugged. “Don’t let it get you down.”

  The advice was so breezy and unhelpful that Amanda’s stomach tightened.

  When Amanda didn’t say anything in reply, Beth changed the subject. “Did you write more Polly?”

  Amanda nodded.

  “I’m getting where I can’t stand Sarah Andrews. I’m starting to hate her. I think I’m going to kill off her husband in the next entry and just get it over with. She needs to get on with her life. She can’t sit around forever counting raindrops.”

  “Maybe you need a subplot. You know, something else that can happen to her.”

  “Like what?”

  “I have to think.” Amanda didn’t know Sarah as well as she knew Polly.

  “Can I come over and we can think together? My mom’s canning tomatoes, and our house stinks. It’s like living in a catsup factory.”

  Amanda didn’t know what to say. That would be one way for Beth to find out that Amanda’s father didn’t live there anymore. But it wasn’t fair that Beth’s mother was canning tomatoes and her father was grumbling about global warming, while Amanda’s family lay in pieces, like a shattered jar of tomatoes.

  “So can I?” Beth asked again.

  “It’s … not a good time,” Amanda said. With a start, she realized that it was the same line her father had used that morning at the motel.

  Cars were starting to leave the parking lot. In the glare of the sweeping headlights, Beth looked surprised, then hurt. She waited, as if expecting Aman
da to explain.

  Meghan appeared in the doorway of the Arts Center and waved to them, or maybe just to Beth. “Beth!” she called. “My parents want to say hi to you.”

  Without another word, the two girls went back inside. The tray of cookies was almost empty now, with only a few broken bits and crumbs left behind. Someone had spilled punch on the white tablecloth, leaving a damp pink stain. If Amanda’s mother had been there, Amanda knew she would have said that a stain like that one would never come out, no matter how hard you scrubbed at it. A stain like that would last forever.

  July 29,1861

  Dear Diary,

  Wounded could mean anything. It could mean that a bullet struck Jeb’s shoulder. It could mean that he broke his leg. Hurt shoulders and broken legs heal. But what if they had to cut off Jeb’s arm or leg? What if Jeb never gets well again?

  Father and Mother are trying to find out more. Father sent a telegram to the army office in Washington. Every hour I look down the road to see if a telegram is coming to us in reply.

  I want to know the truth. And I don’t want to know the truth. But I want to know more than I don’t want to know.

  I think.

  Fear is pounding inside my head like a million tiny marching feet.

  My family was already broken, once Jeb and Thomas left us to fight on opposite sides in this terrible war. But now, with Jeb wounded, we feel like a shattered jar of Mother’s best tomatoes, spreading out in a bloody-looking mess on her clean kitchen floor.

  “Where is he?” I asked Father.

  Father said he didn’t know. There is a military hospital in Washington, near Aunt Sally’s house. Aunt Sally went there to check for us. But her letter came this morning saying that she didn’t find jeb in Washington. Father said there are troops farther south, in Virginia. I think Father or Mother should go look for him there. Father said he has to stay home to do the farming, and an army camp is no place for a woman.

  I have an idea, dear Diary.

  An army camp may be no place for a woman, but it might be a place for a girl. For a girl dressed as a boy.

  The million marching feet in my head are a million dancing feet now. I can tuck up my hair under one of Jeb’s old caps. I can wear his oldest, smallest shirt and trousers. I can find my brother and nurse him back to health and bring him safely home.

  In the morning I rose very early, while even Father was still sleeping. I put on Jeb’s clothes and wrapped some bread and cheese and apples in my old shawl. I hugged Whitie and Blackie. I wrote a note for Father and Mother and left it under the pillow on my bed so that they would find it, but not too soon.

  Gone to find Jeb.

  Love, Polly

  8

  “Go ahead, girls, and get your raincoats on.” Amanda’s mother said on Sunday afternoon.

  Steffi glanced at her watch. “It’s only two-twenty, and Dad’s not going to be here until two-thirty.”

  “He might come early.”

  He never arrived anywhere early, but Amanda didn’t feel like arguing. From the hall closet, she retrieved her green rain slicker and Steffi’s purple one. She didn’t want her father to come to the door and ring the bell and have her mother open it.

  “All it does anymore is rain,” Steffi grumbled as she grabbed her raincoat from Amanda, but didn’t put it on.

  “Speaking of rain, why were your damp clothes hanging in the bathroom yesterday, Amanda?”

  Amanda shot Steffi a look of mute appeal. How could she have been so careless as to leave her wet things there for her mother to find?

  “She got soaked when she went out to get the mail.” Steffi lied so deftly that Amanda almost found herself believing it was true.

  “We only have ten umbrellas in the house. Why doesn’t anybody ever use one? Amanda, run and get one for each of you.”

  Steffi still hadn’t put on her rain slicker. “We’re not going that far, just from the house to the car and from the car to Dad’s apartment.”

  Amanda fetched the umbrellas. It felt far to her. It felt like going on a voyage to the dark side of the moon.

  “You’ll have to tell me all about it!” their mother said brightly.

  “An apartment is just an apartment,” Steffi said.

  “Fine. Don’t tell me, then.”

  “All I said was that an apartment is an apartment. I mean, that’s true. An apartment is an apartment. That’s all I said.”

  “That’s not all you meant.”

  “He’s here!” Amanda interrupted gratefully. “Bye!” she called back over her shoulder, and then wished she hadn’t turned around to see her mother’s face crumpling into tears.

  Without bothering to put up her umbrella, she fled out the door to her father’s waiting car. Steffi pounded right behind her, shrugging on her raincoat as she went.

  Steffi slipped into the front seat next to their dad; Amanda took the backseat.

  “Are you ready to honor my humble abode with your illustrious presence?” their dad asked. The fancy words were obviously intended to be funny, but Amanda didn’t think it was funny that he had a new abode, instead of the same old familiar abode with his wife and daughters.

  Seated directly behind him, she had a good view of his dark green jacket. No long blond hairs, or hairs of any kind, were visible. His shirt collar was hidden by his coat, but she couldn’t believe there was lipstick on it. Amanda didn’t know any women who wore lipstick. Their mother didn’t. Mrs. Angelino didn’t.

  For the first time, it occurred to Amanda that Steffi might be wrong: about long blond hairs, bright red lipstick, lady movie stars, everything.

  Loud rap music blared from the car radio: Steffi’s choice. Their mother would have made Steffi turn it off, but their father started tapping his hand on the steering wheel in time to the beat. Amanda’s heart hurt to see him trying so hard, even though she still hadn’t forgiven him for leaving the chain on the door at the motel. She had made sure to be in the bathtub washing her hair when he called last night.

  “Don’t,” Steffi snapped at him. The tapping stopped.

  The car turned into the parking lot of an apartment complex called Georgetown Meadows. All the buildings were twostory red brick, with little brick pathways leading up to them, like Colonial Williamsburg. Maybe like the Civil War, too. Probably concrete or cement or asphalt hadn’t been invented during the 1860s.

  Amanda wondered if telegrams had been invented then. She’d have to look that up when she got home. The diary would feel fake if Polly’s family was sending telegrams thirty years before telegrams existed. Were telegrams sent by electricity? Had electricity been discovered yet? Actually, now that Amanda considered the question, it would be better if they couldn’t send a telegram. That would give Polly more of a reason to set out to find Jeb herself.

  Leaving their umbrellas behind in the car, Amanda and Steffi ran with their father to his apartment door. Outside, the apartment looked old, but inside, it looked new, with freshly painted white walls and spotless, light wall-to-wall carpet. Amanda had never seen the furniture before; her dad hadn’t taken any of it from home.

  “The apartment came furnished,” he explained, although neither girl had asked. “I figured furniture is furniture.”

  An apartment is an apartment.

  He hung up their raincoats in the front closet, empty except for a few wire hangers. They all sat down in the living room, Amanda and Steffi side by side on the flowered couch, their father facing them in a wingback chair.

  Amanda wondered if he would ask them about school or offer to take them out for ice cream.

  “Do you want a tour of the rest of it?” he asked.

  Steffi shook her head. Amanda shook hers, too.

  “TV?” He tossed Steffi the remote. “I have cable.”

  Steffi clicked it on. It was a relief to hear the sounds of other people’s lives.

  “Mandy?” he said then. “About yesterday morning.”

  Amanda saw Steffi stiffen, even as she kep
t on flipping through the channels.

  “I understand,” Amanda said quickly. “It was too early. You didn’t know I was coming.”

  “No,” he said. “The night before, I had dinner at the crab house at the mall, and there was something off about the crabs. Either that, or I was coming down with a twenty-four-hour stomach flu. I was sick as a dog all night and still getting up to be sick until checkout time at eleven. I can’t remember when I’ve felt worse.”

  He had looked terrible at the motel, that ghastly greenish pale of being about to throw up. And even so, he had been willing to get in the car and drive her home.

  The huge crushing rock of sadness lifted from Amanda’s chest as if a kindly giant had reached down and gathered it up, saying, “You don’t need to carry this. It’s too heavy for you.” The instant she got home, she was going to tear out the notebook page of Possible Clues and burn it. Or chew it up and swallow it, like the stupid spy she was done pretending to be.

  She tried to catch Steffi’s eye, but Steffi had found her very favorite cooking show on the Food Network and was staring straight ahead at the TV screen.

  “Do you feel okay now?” Amanda asked.

  “You bet. But no more crab sandwiches for me for a while.”

  Amanda had never liked crab sandwiches, with the crab’s legs hanging out over the ends of the bun. She felt sick herself just thinking of them.

  “Wasn’t there something you wanted to show me?” he asked.

  “Just that school thing I was telling you about, the Civil War diary.”

  “Do you have it with you now?”

  “No.” She wouldn’t have shown it to him in front of Steffi. And she wouldn’t have shown it to him if she thought he was seeing some lady.

  “Bring it next time. I’m so proud of your writing, Mandy. You really have a knack for putting words together. I still have every Father’s Day poem you ever wrote for me, you know.”

  Amanda waited for Steffi to make her usual retching, gagging sound: Steffi always teased her about writing sappy poems for family members on special occasions. But Steffi didn’t seem to be listening to their conversation. Whatever thirty-minute meal was being prepared on the cooking show was apparently absorbing all her interest.